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Tottenham boss Pochettino ‘worried’ about Kane injuryby Paul Vegas9 months agoSend to a friendShare the loveTottenham boss Mauricio Pochettino was hit by a double injury blow along with defeat to Manchester United on Sunday.Pochettino admitted he is “worried” about the extent of Harry Kane’s ankle injury he picked up at the end of their defeat.Moussa Sissoko was also injured on a damaging afternoon for Spurs, whose title ambitions all-but died.”I think I am worried because we will see what happens with Harry Kane,” Pochettino said.”I think Moussa is only a small thing but we will see, we need to assess Harry Kane.”At the end I think he suffered a big tackle and twisted his ankle and now we need to assess him over the next few days, hoping it is not a big issue.”Sissoko was forced off with a groin injury.”No it was groin, a small thing in his groin. Let’s hope it is not a big issue too,” Pochettino added. About the authorPaul VegasShare the loveHave your sayread more

Arsenal stopper Mustafi reveals he played injured in Liverpool thrashingby Freddie Taylor17 days agoSend to a friendShare the loveShkodran Mustafi has revealed he played through injury for Arsenal last season.The German endured a terrible night in the 5-1 loss to Liverpool in December 2018, but he has revealed he wasn’t fit enough to play the game.”I had missed three weeks injured and then went into the game without training with the team because the coach needed me,” he said. “At half-time it was 4-1, I had a few bad moments and injured myself again. “Afterwards, I got a lot of negative comments from Arsenal fans on Instagram and Twitter, and articles were written in which I was harshly criticised.” About the authorFreddie TaylorShare the loveHave your sayread more

In last week’s column, I pointed out the importance of teams’ early records when trying to predict their playoff fates. This prompted a few skeptical tweets, like so:This tweeter is obviously right. The first few games of the season are predictive in part because losing games makes it harder to make the playoffs, and in part because they tell us something about the strength of the teams that lost them.That said, “Correlation is not causation” is what I like to call The Hammer to end arguments against all kinds of statistical findings. People use it to bash anything, but it’s blunt and dangerous.1Every time someone uses The Hammer on me, a puppy loses its wings.The artist and writer Randall Munroe took on The Hammer in xkcd:In the alt text of that comic, he hits the nail on the head: “Correlation doesn’t imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing ‘look over there.’”Let’s break down an example2Rookie Quarterback Watch has pretty much devolved into “How Bad Will the QBs Ahead of Rookie QBs Get Before the Rookie QBs Get to Start?” Watch.: Last week I observed that quarterbacks who (A) start more games in their rookie seasons (B) tend to have better careers. What does this observation imply?There are several possibilities:Starting rookies causes them to have better careers (A causes B).The types of rookies who are likely to have better careers are more likely to earn a rookie starting spot (B causes A).Rookies who are drafted higher are more likely to get starts, and are also more likely to have better careers (something else — call it C — causes both A and B).This is all just a coincidence and we should go home.Some combination of the above.That covers a lot of bases, but by making the observation, Nos. 1 through 3 become more likely than they were before. In this case, it’s fairly easy to establish that the relationship between A and B (rookie starts and non-rookie career AV) exists even when controlling for C (draft position).Following the observation that A and B are correlated, basically any possible state of the universe in which A and B are causally related has become more likely. For a Bayesian, determining which possibilities have seen their likelihood change the most involves consulting his prior beliefs, establishing which possibilities were the most likely before his new observation, and how likely the observation would be if each possibility were true. This leads to an updated set of beliefs about the likelihood of each scenario, which becomes the baseline for evaluating new observations, and so on.Charitably, “correlation ≠ causation” itself is a kind of limited Bayesian analysis. When people use it, they often mean simply that the “A causes B” scenario still doesn’t seem very likely to them, and thus they think other explanations are more likely. This is the case for most popular statistics examples, like the fact that lemon imports correlate negatively with highway fatality. That lemons are somehow preventing accidents is obviously ridiculous, so it doesn’t matter how strong the correlation is: It’s either a coincidence or we’re going to need other explanations.3I should note that for a true Bayesian, the odds that lemon imports actually do reduce highway fatality has still increased on the margins.But the idea that rookies playing could help them develop is not ridiculous — it’s highly debatable. After observing the relationship between rookie QB starts and career success (plus controlling for draft position), I must conclude that playing rookies is more likely to be good for their careers than I thought before, barring any other evidence. But that doesn’t mean it’s true. The alternative (or concurrent) explanation is also plausible: If coaches are good at determining which rookie QBs are actually good, and then tend to start the better ones, it’s still possible that starting them has a neutral (or even negative) effect on their careers individually. Regardless of which explanation is true, the observation remains the same: a rookie QB getting the start is good news for his prospects.Charts of the weekAaron Rodgers had his ups and downs against the Jets last week:I jest, of course. Rodgers brilliantly brought the Packers back from a 21-3 hole, but the comeback was complete by the end of the third quarter.This was Rodgers’s first-ever win after being down 15 points or more4I picked this number because it’s the smallest margin which Rodgers has never overcome, but as a separate and interesting point, I’ve found that 15-16 point margins, while technically “two scores” because they can be reached with two touchdowns plus two point conversions, actually act more like three score margins (17) than two score margins (14). against an opponent — though it was only his 12th opportunity. Here’s how he stacks up against other QBs since 2001 in comparable situations:Whoa, Peyton Manning! Forget Rodgers, Manning is the story here. But, it’s only 10 wins. Crazy things happen right? Let’s widen the scope, taking a look at all games in which a player’s team trailed by eight or more points, rather than just 15 or more:Peyton Manning is a practically Messi-esque outlier, complete with his own Cristiano Ronaldo to keep him company.Goatslinger of the weekThis was a tough week for gunslingers, as QBs who threw interceptions went 1-14, most of those games weren’t that close, and many of the interceptions were terrible. (Our nominal winner: Matt Ryan, whose three interceptions were at least all thrown downfield while his team was trailing.)So I’ve invented a new (hopefully temporary) award of ignominy: the Goatslinger.Andrew Luck, last week’s Gunslinger, is a contender for Goatslinger this week. With just 5:15 left, up seven against the Philadelphia Eagles, and already in field goal range, he threw an interception to Malcolm Jenkins. Plays like that give gamblers a bad name!But the top Goatslinger was Colin Kaepernick for his amazing effort to throw away San Francisco’s win against Chicago. He managed four turnovers (three interceptions and a fumble), three of them with his team up, including the interception up 20-14 in the fourth quarter that led to Chicago’s game-deciding touchdown.Twitter question of the week, Part 1I had two interesting questions on Twitter this week related to the timing and length of drives. First up:The answer is essentially “none,” or that there ends up being even less scoring in these scenarios. But the question is deceptively interesting. It’s also a fun vehicle for exploring the relationship between turnover rates and scoring/touchdown rates.In general, teams score more per drive when they are behind, but are also more likely to turn the ball over. I’ve broken down drives by quarter and point margin (tied, up or down 1-3 points, 4-7 points, 8-14 points, and 15 points or more) and compared how often the drives resulted in touchdowns to how often they resulted in turnovers.5To pre-empt a question I will almost certainly get despite this attempt to pre-empt it: Yes, obviously a lot more can happen on drives than just touchdowns or turnovers. For example, drives that end in field goal attempts count as neither, even though they may lead to points. This matters in situations where there’s no time for a touchdown, or where a team only cares about the three points. But we’ve excluded a lot of those situations by filtering out the last two minutes of each half. It’s also possible to do the same analysis on a points-per-drive, or even “expected points added” basis, but the results are similar. Considering the implications are the same, I prefer the symmetry and ease of interpreting touchdowns vs. turnovers. This gives us a sense of the trade-off between the two.Think of a drive when the game is tied in the first quarter as a kind of baseline: If a team starts at least 70 yards out, 15.5 percent of such drives will end in TDs, and 12.5 percent will end in turnovers. Compare that to the situation where teams are most aggressive: when they’re down 8-14 points in the fourth quarter. In those scenarios they score touchdowns 21.2 percent of the time and turn it over at a 27.5 percent clip.As teams play more aggressively, their chances of scoring go up, but so do their chances of turning the ball over. You can think of the ratio between these chances as the “price” of marginal scoring. For example, increasing your chances of scoring a touchdown by 1 percent requires increasing your chances of turning the ball over by up to 2 percent.6I should note that this exchange rate is likely skewed a little by the fact that worse teams tend to be behind more. I’m working on deskewing this to get a more exact comparison for a future project. In some situations, that’s a price you’re willing to pay (such as when you’re behind and stalled drives are pretty much just as bad), and in some it’s not.Understanding this trade-off is useful in analyzing a whole range of things in football, and my study of it is ongoing. But in the meantime, we can use our immediate findings to look at the situations our tweeter asked about and see what’s going on there.Before the half, it’s apparent that teams are extremely willing to settle for the points they have. With between one and two minutes on the clock in the second quarter, teams score touchdowns on 7 percent of their drives and turn the ball over on 12.9 percent. These are both lower than our baseline, so they’re definitely being conservative. It’s unclear what effect more aggression would have.With between one and two minutes on the clock at the end of the fourth quarter in games separated by between four and eight points, teams score touchdowns on 15.3 percent of drives, and turn the ball over on 42.1 percent of them. This is interesting because they spend a large number of turnovers on a completely average number of touchdowns. I think this reflects time pressure, but it could also suggest that true last-ditch “prevent” defenses may be pretty effective.Twitter question of the week, Part 2The simple answer is: Absolutely, a drive that eats up clock is valuable — when a team is ahead and wants to shorten the game. But shortening the game can also be useful when one team is a lot worse than the other.Imagine trading 100 drives with a team led by Peyton Manning, the Chiefs’ opponent in Week 2. Manning scores more per drive than anyone, and his accumulated points scored over 100 of them would be impossible for all but the best teams to overcome. Say the difference between your team and Manning’s was that Manning’s was one point per drive better — in a 100-drive game, your team would have to run 100 points above expectation to have a fighting chance. Statistically, that’s virtually impossible.7A team’s standard deviation on points scored over 100 drives is only 10 times the standard deviation of points scored for a single drive, so it can’t be more than 35, which would make a 100-point swing a three-standard-deviation event.But if each team got only one drive, yours would win every time it scored and Manning’s didn’t. That’s orders of magnitude more likely.This was pretty much exactly what happened with the Chiefs against the Broncos. The Chiefs had two extremely long drives in the second half: The first came at the start of the third quarter, lasted 10 minutes, and ended with a missed 37-yard field goal. The second came at the start of the fourth quarter, lasted 7:42, and ended with a Chiefs TD that drew them within four and set up a potential game-winning drive after Manning failed to score. As a result, Manning had only two meaningful possessions in the entire second half. Down 11 points, the Chiefs needed to score twice in their three possessions and have Denver score none in their two to win. Given the circumstances, those aren’t terrible odds.But let’s focus on their second drive at the very beginning of the fourth. It’s extremely risky to draw up a drive that lasts that long when down 11, as the end of the game quickly approaches. But leaving that aside, they did score a TD in a supposedly back-breaking fashion. Are such TDs any more valuable than regular TDs in similar situations?Using play-by-play data from ESPN, I looked back at all touchdown-scoring drives starting in the third quarter8I excluded the fourth quarter to minimize end-of-game effect. since 2001 in which a team was down 11-13 points at the start. I was kind of surprised by the results:The sample sizes on these aren’t very big (it’s only 107 cases total, and the most likely drive is right around the middle), but teams have won nine of 19 cases (47 percent) in which their scoring drives lasted longer than three minutes. That’s a pretty big number for being down, and it’s way higher than the 20 percent teams won after scoring on more normal drives. Why and if that’s significant, I don’t know, but it certainly leaves open the possibility that long drives like that may indicate/affect something larger.The Hacker Gods read FiveThirtyEightAs we all know, the Hacker Gods — who probably created this universe, by accident, while simulating a fourth-dimensional supernova — obviously read FiveThirtyEight. Last week they appeared to enjoy bolstering my analysis of Philip Rivers, but this week they are trying to undo me.Aaron Rodgers, whom I previously criticized for playing too conservatively (especially when behind), somehow brought the Packers back from 18 down against the Jets, earning the first 15+ point comeback victory of his career.Last week I talked up the majesty of gambling even if it risks an interception, but in Week 2 quarterbacks who threw one or more interceptions went 1-14.The only INT-throwing QB to win was Nick Foles against the Colts, but he won in part because inaugural Gunslinger of the Week Andrew Luck basically gave the game away by throwing his own INT with his team up seven and in field goal range in the fourth (suffice to say, that is a terrible spot to gamble).Experimental chart of the weekInspired by the Aaron Rodgers comeback, I asked on Twitter who people would want leading their team if it was down 15 or more points. Andrew Luck won the straw poll by a landslide with 47 percent of the votes, versus 20 percent for Peyton Manning. (Turnout was poor.9Only 15 votes total.)From the Charts of the Week above, this might seem pretty silly. For the most part, it is: Manning has won a higher percentage of games in which he has been down by 15 points than Luck, over a lot more games, even though it seems Luck has been on a tear for a couple of years. Impressive, but Manning has been down 15 much less often than Luck.This chart plots the percentage of 15-point comeback opportunities won vs. how often those opportunities have come up. I’ve also represented the total number of games, the number of comeback opportunities, and the number of successful comebacks as concentric circles, and plotted like so:Manning is even more impressive relative to Brady/Rodgers, but Luck managing to win in 3 of just 13 tries despite being on a team that ends up in that spot 36 percent of the time isn’t too shabby (the other data point near Luck at 20 percent is Matthew Stafford). If he can keep that up for another decade or so, he might just be a worthy successor to Manning.Most empirically significant game of Week 3If I could only watch one game, obviously it would be the Broncos/Seahawks Super Bowl rematch. But there is probably nothing that could happen in that game that would surprise me.Minnesota at New Orleans, on the other hand, holds some mystery. It may have even more empirical effect on Peyton Manning’s legacy than Manning’s own game: Every game that Matt Cassel bombs is more evidence that Bill Belichick has more to do with Tom Brady’s success than Tom Brady (because then it’s more likely that Cassel’s/Brady’s success in New England was because of Belichick), that Randy Moss is likely responsible for much of Brady’s (and Cassel’s) statistical accomplishment, and thus that Peyton Manning is the greatest quarterback of this generation.Charts by Reuben Fischer-BaumCORRECTION (Sept. 18, 1:50 p.m.): This article originally misstated the time and recipient of Andrew Luck’s interception in the Colts’ game against the Eagles. Luck threw the interception with 5:15, not 5:32, left in the fourth quarter and Malcolm Jenkins, not Rahim Moore, intercepted it.read more

More appalling details have surfaced regarding the gruesome deaths of a 30-year-old German man and his Bulgarian partner Lilia Botuseva, 23, reported missing since 8 June 2017.Their bodies were discovered in a rented room and a village hotel in Vlachata, Kefalonia where they were staying as tourists.The couple had arrived in Greece in a car with fake plates that the man had rented in Germany. According to the Greek authorities and coroner Angeliki Tsiola, the duo appear to have taken their lives during a New Year’s Eve satanic ceremony.A time-frame of 24 hours before the first full moon of the year is often associated with satanic rituals and sacrifices. As Mrs Tsiola mentioned in her report, the woman started to cut herself with a blade causing abundant bleeding from several fatal wounds. Once the man saw Botuseva die, he allegedly sat in the bathtub which he had filled with water and thrust a knife through his heart. The woman’s body had multiple scars from previous acts of self harm, possibly caused by participating in similar rituals in the past. Facebook Twitter: @NeosKosmos Instagramread more

Rangers Football Club manager Steven Gerrard has hammered his team’s defenders after their horror outing against Spartak Moscow on Thursday.The Gers took the lead three times in Moscow, but a woeful second-half display handed them their first UEFA Europa League defeat of the season.The Scottish Premiership club were on a high when first-half strikes from Glenn Middleton, Daniel Candeias and an own-goal from Roman Eremenko gave them a 3-2 advantage.But shocking defensive lapses, especially in the second half, allowed Spartak to seize control for a 4-3 win, as they blew Group G wide open.Gerrard’s side seat third in their group behind Spartak and Villarreal, but host the Spanish club on match day 5 as they look to secure qualification for the second round.However, the former Liverpool youth team coach refused to spare his ropey rear-guard and knows more lamentable defending in their next two group games will cost them any shot at the last 32.Owen reveals why Liverpool didn’t offer Gerrard a new contract Manuel R. Medina – September 6, 2019 According to Owen, the Reds wanted to sell Gerrard two years before he left the club and that’s why they didn’t offer him a contract renewal.He said, according to Express: “I’m very disappointed with the result. You saw two sides of our performance tonight. We attacked very well and were dangerous and countered bravely. We got our rewards and had control at half-time.“However, football is about levels and if you don’t do the basics well enough and defend properly, then high-level teams will normally punish you and that was the case here.“People who have had a lot of praise and who did really well to get us to this stage just didn’t do the basics well enough.“Normally, to come here and score three goals you get a result, but I’m bitterly disappointed with how we defended.”read more

Kolkata: Debojyoti Kar, who has ranked fifth in the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination (WBJEE), is overwhelmed with his rank and also expressed his desire to be an IIT engineer, the result of which is yet to come.Kar is a student of Apeejay School. He had never expected that he would be able to make it to the top 10 list. He said that he had performed well in the examination and expected that his name might feature in top 20 list of the successful candidates. Also Read – Heavy rain hits traffic, flightsHis aim, however, is to become an IIT engineer. He has appeared for the examination and waiting for its results to be published.From his childhood, Kar had wanted to be an engineer. He is happy that he has secured a rank in the state joint entrance examination, but IIT would be his first choice.He owed his success to his parents and also to the teachers of the institution who had trained him. ‘Hard work is the key to success’ is the message Kar wants to convey to the students who will appear for the joint entrance examination in future. He also reminded that hard work and studying with a strategy have fetched the stellar result for him. Also Read – Speeding Jaguar crashes into Merc, 2 B’deshi bystanders killedHe used to study 3-4 hours every day when he used to go to school and the number of study hours used to go up to 7-8 when there was no school.Avinandan Bose, who topped the merit list from South Point High School, was not available for interview as he is currently attending a summer camp in Mumbai. It was, however, learnt that like Kar, Bose is also awaiting results of some other examinations.Dedipya Ray, ranked second in the examination this year, said that he had studied seriously but was never so bothered about the result. He studied only to prepare for various examinations and was not very particular about the number of hours he used to devote for his studies. Mathematics and Physics were his two favourite subjects, where he laid maximum stress. He has also given a message to the future engineering aspirants, saying that one should study round the year and suggested not to bother about the examination too much. “Serious work always brings fruitful result. Solving question papers of previous years is also one of the key factors behind success,” he said. He was a student of Hariyana Vidya Mandir in Salt Lake.Ayushi Vidyanta is the sole female ranker, who secured 10th position in the merit list. She is from FIITJEE, Vishakhapatnam. Shuvam Agarwal, Debojyoti Kar, Namon Biyani, Rittwik Gangopadhyay, Ranajay Midya and Abhishek Srivastava have ranked fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth respectively.read more

When it comes to playing chess against a male opponent, women often outperform expectations, a new study claims. The study results, published in the journal Psychological Science, indicate that women players are not affected by negative stereotypes about their chess abilities during competition games.According to the researchers, data from 1,60,000 ranked chess players and more than five million chess matches suggests that women playing against men perform better than expected based on their official chess ratings. Also Read – Add new books to your shelf”The news is good for female chess players, of whom there are exploding numbers. Although discrimination is real and pervasive, women playing tournament chess do not seem to be at a disadvantage when paired with men,” said the co-author of the study, Tom Stafford from the University of Sheffield.To investigate this phenomenon, researchers analysed data from standard tournament chess games played between rated players from January 2008 through August 2015. Also Read – Over 2 hours screen time daily will make your kids impulsiveThe rating system continuously incorporates game outcomes to update players’ ratings. These ratings can be used to predict who will win in a match between any two players, the researcher said.In total, the analyses included data from 1,50,977 men and 16,158 women playing in 55,58,110 games.Overall, men had a slightly higher average FIDE rating than women. But the game outcomes indicated that women won matches against men more often than would have been predicted given each player’s rating. This pattern held across the whole range of rating differences. In other words, women outperformed expectations when playing a man compared with when they played against other women, a finding that runs contrary to the negative effect that one would expect as a result of stereotype threat.”These findings show that even famous psychological phenomena may not be present all the time. Factors other than stereotype threat appear to be more important in determining men and women’s tournament chess performance,” Stafford noted.read more

Taking care of ones nails is very important when it comes to maintaining hygiene. Keep your hands moisturised, coat the nails properly and choose proper lacquer, suggest experts. Beauty experts list down some ways to take care of nails:- Practice good nail hygiene: Without proper care, the nails become brittle and thin and so, it is essential to have a regular maintenance routine. Manicure and pedicure help in keeping healthy and shiny looking nails. Ensure that you stick to salons that have technicians who have undergone proper training. Wear gloves for better nail care when working with your hands, such as when you are gardening or housecleaning, to protect the polish and keep dirt out of your nails. Also Read – Add new books to your shelf-Choose correct nail lacquer and nail care collection: Wearing nail polish does not harm your healthy nails, but many of your favourite nail polishes and acrylics, are full of harsh chemicals that cause nail brittleness, dryness, and thinning. Ensure that you use products that are paraben-free, sulfate-free, formaldehyde-free, toxin-free, gluten-free, cruelty-free and vegan.-Pick a nail colour remover that treats conditions that adversely affect nails and cuticles, preferable something that has the unique goodness of Vitamins A, C, and E. Also Read – Over 2 hours screen time daily will make your kids impulsive-Hydrate your hands: It is advised to wash the hands with lukewarm water to help keep the hands and nails soft and smooth. Also, apply a hand cream frequently which is enriched with fruit extracts. It will help in restoring and make the hands look hydrated and moisturised.-Coat it up: Bottom and top coat may seem unimportant, but they help to keep our nails from chipping, splitting, cracking and strengthen and protect the nail from being stained. The coats also do an awesome job smoothing imperfections. Try and pick up a top coat which has an external barrier harder than traditional top coats, so it’s more durable against wear and damage. Also look for UV protection in the formula to combat environmental damage to include fading and yellowing. -Nail extension: The nails are one of the parts of the body that can say more of a person. In fact, many people look at the hands because they say a lot about each other’s personality, the way of life. Presentable nails are equally important and if the nails do not grow and are short, it’s beneficial to get nail extension done.-Take care of your nail extensions. Make sure that you fix the damaged nails as soon as possible and keep an eye out for dryness, redness and peeling of skin or cuticles.-Moisturise cuticles: Taking care of the cuticles is a critical part for a healthy growing nail. Dry, cracking cuticles not only make nails look messy, they can also cause hangnails and just plain hurt. Cuticles are part of your skin and serve the important purpose of acting as your nail’s protective barrier. Moisturise and massage with oils which have healing properties such as Argan Oil to restore moisture and repair damages.read more